The deal is worth about Rs 95 billion /$1.31 billion and will involve buying out Alibaba’s stake
Tata Digital Limited, a 100% subsidiary of Tata Sons Private Limited has acquired a majority stake in Supermarket Grocery Supplies Private Limited (Bigbasket) – India’s largest e-commerce player in the Food & Grocery segment.
E-grocery has been one of the fastest growing segments in the consumer e-commerce space and its growth is propelled with India’s rising consumption and digital penetration. The current pandemic has further accelerated its adoption as consumers seek the convenience of ordering quality groceries delivered safely at home.
Bigbasket was founded in 2011 in Bangalore and has expanded its presence to 25+ cities across India since then. In the e-grocery space, bigbasket provides one of the largest assortments (50,000+ SKUs) and provides customers the convenience of home deliveries on preferred dates and timeslots. It also operates a farm-to-fork supply chain with over [12,000] farmers and several collection centers across India to deliver high-quality & fresh fruits and vegetables to its customers.
Pratik Pal, CEO of Tata Digital said: “Grocery is one of the largest components of an individual’s consumption basket in India, and bigbasket as India’s largest e-grocery player, fits in perfectly with our vision of creating a large consumer digital ecosystem. We are delighted to welcome bigbasket as a part of the Tata Digital.”
Hari Menon, CEO of bigbasket, said: “We are extremely excited about our future as a part of Tata Group. As a part of the Tata Ecosystem we would be able to build stronger consumer connect and accelerate our journey.”
Tata Group is building a digital consumer ecosystem addressing consumer needs across categories in a unified manner and online food & grocery is an important part of this ecosystem. Accordingly, this acquisition presents an attractive opportunity for Tata Group in its overall vision of creating a digital ecosystem.
Tata Digital is a 100 percent subsidiary of Tata Sons Private Limited. Tata Digital set up its operations in August 2019, to build consumer-centric digital businesses for deep consumer engagement and their needs across multiple verticals – retail, travel, financial services.
Bigbasket is creating milestones in the online grocery market and has recently re-hauled its supply chains across cities to fulfill a majority of customer orders faster. The company’s operations have expanded to 30 cities in India, recording about 15 million customer orders per month. bigbasket’s differentiation lies in its supply chain integration for fresh fruits, vegetables and meats, and its strong private label brands. In 2020, bigbasket reached the milestone of US$ 1 billion in annual revenues.
Source: Business World
